


we wake eternally

by juliasets



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Don't Try This At Home, Gen, Hallucifer is a dick, Improper use of drugs, Platonic Bedsharing, References to Torture, Sam's Cage memories, Season/Series 07, gencest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 12:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18468679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliasets/pseuds/juliasets
Summary: Sam can’t sleep, not with the devil constantly whispering in his mind. He’s barely scraping by on coffee and uppers. And then one morning he wakes up from a good night’s sleep in their latest piece of junk car, Dean by his side. With his head clear for the first time in days, he knows he needs to figure out a solution to his insomnia before it gets worse, but the cure may be worse than the disease.





	we wake eternally

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to my wonderful, amazing artist sweetheartdean!

* * *

Sam wakes up.

It surprises him. Sam hasn’t woken up in days. He’s been awake plenty, but in order to wake up you have to sleep, and that’s been a problem.

He’s not particularly rested. Crashing in cars isn’t a recipe for the best night's sleep when you’re six and a half feet tall. The car they’re currently using is a 1970 Dodge Charger with bucket seats instead of the Impala’s roomy bench. They’d reclined the seats as far as they went and hoped for the best. Now there’s a crick in his neck and his back twinges as he sits up.

But any amount of rest is a revelation to his sleep deprived brain. The world is clearer, the fog lifted from his mind.

“There he is,” Dean says, glancing over from the driver’s seat.

Sam levers himself up and finds Dean reading through a newspaper, pen dangling from his lips.

“….Time is it?” Sam asks muzzily.

“Almost eight.”

Nearly seven hours of sleep from when they’d crashed late last night. Not bad.

“You were really out.”

Sam nods, still playing catch up. He registers that something’s missing, but for the longest time he can’t put a finger on what it is. Dean’s here, after all.

It hits him like a punch: Lucifer is quiet.

He spends a moment frozen in terror. Lucifer is the metaphorical elephant in the room and there’s a real fear that remembering him will make the devil reappear in all his obnoxious glory. But Sam’s mind remains blissfully silent.

He pulls in a shaky breath. It’s been so long since he had peace. It’s not like everything is great; they’re still stuck in a shitty car on the run from ancient monsters. Bobby’s still dead.

But all of that is so much more manageable after getting some sleep.

“Find anything?” Sam asks, running a hand through his hair.

Dean tosses the paper onto the dashboard. “Nothing useful. Or fun. And with Frank…”

Sam winces. “Yeah.” Frank had been a paranoid, difficult misanthrope. But he’d been on their side. Whatever else, he hadn’t deserved the end that had come to him in that blood-streaked trailer.

Allies are in short supply now.

“Come on,” Dean says, reaching over and starting up the car. “Let’s go get some food.”

 

* * *

  


The diner is, as always, more Dean’s fare than Sam’s, but Sam’s feeling good enough that he doesn’t complain. He even orders actual solid food and not just coffee. Sure, it’s just a broccoli omelet, but Dean manages to look thrilled about Sam's choice all the same.

They even have a whole conversation, though it's mostly small talk. Plenty of time later in the day to freak out about the leviathans. With the fog lifted from his brain Sam can even hold up his side of the conversation.

He’s just finishing up his omelet when a cool breeze grazes the side of Sam’s neck. They’re not seated anywhere near the door. It actually feels like someone’s blowing on him…

Oh, of course.

Sam darts his eyes to the side and, sure enough, Lucifer is sitting next to him on the cracked vinyl booth. Sam pulls a deep breath in and pushes it out.

“You’re looking much better today, Sam,” the devil says, stretching his arm across the back of the booth, just barely brushing Sam’s neck. Sam can’t stop the automatic flinch. He looks up in time to see Dean’s face fall.

“We should hit the road,” Sam says, pushing the remnants of his breakfast away. He downs the rest of his coffee, though.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean agrees. The levity is gone. Once again he looks like the weight of the world is on him and it hurts Sam to know he's the cause. Dean pulls out a twenty and some ones and drops them on the table.

Sam needs to pull it together, to be there for his brother.

Lucifer's palm settles across the back of Sam’s neck.

 

* * *

  


Sam doesn’t like drugs. He’d tried pot in college, but hated the way it made his thoughts spiral endlessly in upon themselves. Alcohol wasn’t so bad, even if Sam didn’t like the loss of control associated with getting drunk. But it wasn’t just the illicit kind of drugs he shied away from. His first instinct is always to just put his head down and push through the pain or the illness or whatever. It drove Dean to distraction when Sam would nurse a migraine for two days instead of taking anything for it.

It’s what he’s been trying to do with the visions. Put his head down and power through. But at this point he can admit that it’s not working. The cut on his hand has long since scarred over and as wary as drugs make Sam, he has to admit it’s probably better than opening up another wound.

He starts off easy and pops a few Benadryl from their med kit. Antihistamines have always put Sam out, one of the reasons he usually chooses to suffer through his occasional seasonal allergies.

This time it doesn’t even make a dent.

Sam can’t exactly make an appointment with a doctor, but he’s got access to the internet, which is how he decides to try melatonin next. It’s a hormone, sold over-the-counter, minimal side effects. Sam can’t afford to lose his edge, not while he and Dean are still being hunted by Dick Roman and his monsters.

Sam sacrifices some of their dwindling cash to buy the supplements and pops a decent dosage before they bunk down for the night. Their choices of motels have deteriorated since they had to ditch the cards. This one smells musty and neither he nor Dean are chancing getting under the covers. Sam stares up at the brown stains in the speckled tiles of the drop ceiling.

“That one looks like an elephant,” Lucifer says from where he lays next to Sam.

Sam doesn’t acknowledge him.

The devil is undeterred. His next words are low and deceptively soft. Sam can feel his breath, frigid against the shell of his ear. “And that one looks like me, don’t you think?”

Sam can’t help the way his eyes track the line of Lucifer’s arm, but instead of the sprawling, muddied stain he knows is there he can see the outline of Lucifer’s face.

His _true_ face.

Sam jackknifes up as his pitiful flesh and blood brain struggles to process shapes that exist in several more dimensions than Sam himself does. Pain lances through his head, whiting out the room around him.

The next thing he knows he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, head down and hands knotted tight in his hair. He glances up reflexively, but luckily he hasn’t woken Dean up with his panic.

Damn it.

 

* * *

  


The next night Dean has to hustle some pool to replenish their rapidly dwindling supply of cash. For all that he never liked the illegality of it, Sam misses their steady supply of scammed credit cards. It wasn’t like they’d ever lived in the lap of luxury, but even that standard of comfort seems extravagant now.

Sam holds down a high top and keeps an eye out for trouble. He wishes he could help, but his hands are shaky with a brutal combination of exhaustion and caffeine.

Lucifer is seated at a stool next to him, keeping up a running commentary on the bar patrons. The clientele is rougher than their usual crowd, but the hope is that they’re less likely to care about a couple of dead serial killers in their midst.

Dean does his thing. The biker he’s just taken for $200 still looks like he wants to be Dean’s best friend. Sam shakes his head. He’s always been in awe of Dean’s rapport with people. Sure, Sam can talk to witnesses or law enforcement just fine, but it's a learned skill for him. For Dean’s it’s as natural as breathing or driving.

“That’s because everyone can tell you’re a freak,” Lucifer suggests.

Sam pushes down on his palm reflexively. It doesn’t work anymore, but it’s a hard habit to break.

The problem, as Sam sees it, is that the more tired he gets, the more present Lucifer is. So he can maintain a certain level of functionality as long as he mainlines caffeine during the day, but any attempt at sleeping means having to lower those barriers. He needs something that’ll knock him out fast, before Lucifer is able to get his hooks in. Literally.

Dean’s prowess has gained him some attention from the other pool sharks. Dean throws a couple of close games before winning back twice as much in an “upset.” When he finally drags himself away from his new friends it’s pushing bar time. Dean settles up their tab. Sam slams the rest of his drink and makes his way outside. They’re still using the Charger, her lines alien in the dark compared to the sleek angles of the Impala. Sam rests a hip against the trunk 

Dean slams out the door and Sam watches his gait rapidly shift out of a drunken stumble.

“Still got it, Sammy!”

Sam rolls his eyes and waits as Dean gets in, reaching across to flip up the lock on the passenger side. Sam folds himself into the car.

Dean pulls out of the gravel lot and onto the rural route. “Mind if we crash in the car tonight?”

Sam shifts his feet in the shallow footwell. His back is acting up and he’d been looking forward to a chance to get fully horizontal. But he gets not wanting to blow their money on some no-tell-motel.

More importantly, he’d downed a couple Ambien with the last of his beer, so he’s looking at only about a half an hour before he’ll hopefully be down for the count, so this is no time to be picky. He’d bought the pills off a very helpful dealer outside their last motel. There were some benefits to being stuck on the wrong side of the tracks.

“Car’s fine with me,” Sam answers, pulling at the lever to recline his seat. There aren’t any streetlights out here in between the frost-covered fields and no other cars on the road. Dean keeps the high beams on as they roll through the darkness, the low rumble lulling Sam to sleep.

 

* * *

  


Sam wakes before Dean the next morning, the car parked between a harvested wheat field and a stand of trees, and congratulates himself on having solved his problem.

 

* * *

  


The next night he pops another couple Ambien, washing it down with brackish water from the bathroom sink.

The TV is on, but Dean’s not watching anything in particular, choosing instead to flip endlessly through channels in search of that elusive “something to watch.” It’s a habit known to drive Sam up the wall, but he’s feeling pretty magnanimous with nearly a full night’s sleep under his belt, even with Lucifer pacing the edges of the room like an angry tiger.

He’s lying on his stomach, face turned away from Dean and the flickering light of the ancient TV. Medicated drowsiness creeps over him and he shuts his eyes.

There’s a sudden draft, chilly, and Sam wonders idly if Dean’s heading out to a bar.

“Different kind of bars, Sammy.”

Sam’s eyes shoot open at Lucifer’s words, spoken directly into his ear.

He’s in the Cage. There were bars, sometimes, iron like a prison cell as Sam’s mind struggled to adjust to the non-Euclidian geometry of the deepest depths of hell.

Those bars are what he sees now, through the endless gloom. Sam’s entire body locks up as the freezing air of the Cage swirls around him. It doesn’t feel like he’s lying on the hard floor of the Cage but a bed is even worse news and he can feel Lucifer’s presence behind him, endless and unfathomable and Sam keeps still, like a rabbit or a deer, like prey, but there’s nowhere to hide here—

“Sam?”

It’s instinct, turning his head to Dean’s voice. Lucifer has played on that instinct before. Internally, Sam tells himself to not be so stupid this time, that Dean can’t be here.

But when he turns the Cage is gone. It’s just the motel room with its sickly yellow walls and nineteen-seventies orange and brown décor. Dean’s looking at him, hasn’t even noticed that he’s accidentally stopped his incessant channel surfing on Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

“You okay over there?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” Sam replies weakly.

“You were breathing kinda weird.” A grins steals over Dean’s face. “Sorry if I interrupted a _good_ dream.”

“Shut up,” Sam shoots back, rolling back away from him.

“Clowns or midgets, dude?”

Sam doesn’t reply. He also doesn’t sleep.

 

* * *

  


The next morning Dean is on a coffee run and Sam tries to figure out what went wrong. The Ambien had worked once.

Of course, the answer seems obvious once he thinks about it. The Ambien had worked when they were crashing in the car. Before that, he’d woken up in the car as well.

Their tiny muscle car isn’t the most comfortable place to sleep and it doesn’t have the nostalgic calming effect of the Impala, but it must be close enough.

He tries to nudge Dean to sleeping in the car the next night, but it’s not any more comfortable for him than it is for Sam. There’s another long day and night of sleeplessness before Dean takes off with a bartender and leaves Sam with the keys. Sam forgoes the Ambien and tucks himself away in the passenger seat.

Lucifer sings every Disney song Sam’s ever heard in retaliation.

He doesn’t sleep.

 

* * *

  


Dean comes back in the morning, clothes rumpled and grin lazy. Sam can’t be too upset by it. Dean needed it. He’s as stressed as Sam is, maybe more. It’s not as if Sam’s descent into insanity is helping.

As disappointing as the night alone was, the data is still valuable. It’s not the car. Sure, Sam gets some brief shut-eye as they head out and drive along the long flat highways of the heartland. Dean's even kind enough to tune into whatever soft rock station he can find.

But if it’s not the car, then it has to be something else and the only other common factor is Dean. Or, at least, the presence of another person. Sam’s not exactly sure why sharing a motel room isn’t good enough, but if proximity to a person is enough to let him get some sleep, he’s not too proud to find help.

This is more Dean’s area of expertise, but Sam is a reasonably attractive guy. Dean might think he’s repressed, but sex has just never meant the same thing for Sam that it does for Dean. Good enough when he can get it, but he can do without.

Insofar as Sam has a type, Kelsey isn’t exactly it. There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s sweet and funny, but Sam doesn’t feel anything for her. No spark or connection. Nothing deeper than the superficial. It’s not his normal M.O., but these are desperate times and there are worse things to endure than a night with a pretty girl.

She’s got an apartment and Dean’s only too happy to let Sam go. He probably takes it as a good sign, the return of his libido.

Sam hasn’t had sex since he returned from the Cage. That doesn’t even occur to him until they’re back at Kelsey’s place and half naked. At first he thinks the tension building beneath his skin is arousal. They’re on her bed before Sam feels the panic rising in his gut.

Lucifer’s breath is cold on the back of Sam’s neck.

Hanging on by the skin of his teeth, Sam manages to distract Kelsey from how decidedly not into the proceedings he suddenly is. She falls asleep after. Sam lies next to her, still in his clothes, and tries breathing exercises to still his racing heart.

Lucifer is there, in the darkness. Waiting.

Sam’s still awake when the sun comes up.

 

* * *

  


Doctors are still out of the question, but Sam’s got a rudimentary understanding of biology and access through several VPNs and a Tor browser with beefed up encryption—thanks Frank—to the dark web.

He finds two medical-grade anesthetics that might work. Neither is recommended for use without doctor supervision and they’re not cheap. Ordering poses another problem since they’ve chopped up all their credit cards. In the end Sam pays some grad student cash to set him up with a cryptocurrency called bitcoin that he insists is the next big thing. For the amount of money Sam’s paying him, it better be.

It takes another week before they hit up the P.O. Box. Another long, agonizing week of Sam sitting miserably in bed, pulling at his hair to keep from sleeping. He’s been supplementing his extra strength coffee with No-Doz. Judging by the flutter in his chest it’s not doing anything great for his heart.

The drug fortunately came in an oral formulation, one of its benefits. Sam wasn’t about to set up an IV. Considering their motel room quality he’d probably end up with lockjaw if he tried inserting a line in his arm here. Plus, it might raise some questions with Dean.

He has to calculate the dosage, based on his weight. Lucifer complains that he’s getting skinny. It’s true, he’s lost a lot of the musculature that the soulless version of himself had put on. There’s more time for working out when you don’t sleep.

Fuck, it’d be nice if he didn’t need sleep now.

He downs the drug out of a plastic syringe and had to suppress his gagging. It tastes disgusting, horribly bitter, and he cringes silently in the tiny motel bathroom. Any noises are going to alert Dean.

“Oh, c’mon, you’ve drank worse, Sammy.”

Sam ignores Lucifer’s taunts and makes his way to the bed. They don’t undress for sleep anymore so he flops down on top of the comforter with his boots still on.

He wonders how long it’ll take.

 

* * *

  


The Cage is indescribable. Literally. Sam knows so many languages, but words can’t convey what the human brain isn’t designed to understand. Even Enochian falls flat.

There are words to describe aspects of his innumerable time there. The fire, the cold. Chains and hooks. Knives, blood, and broken bones.

Torture.

But all of them are just nibbling around the edges of the truth.

Sam lost himself there.

He thinks that Dean got him out. He’s sure that Dean got him out. The Lucifer he sees can’t be real. He’s only a phantasm conjured up  by Sam’s mind.

That thought terrifies Sam more than anything else. Sometimes it’s worse than the lingering fear that he’s still in hell.

It means that part of him, part of his own mind, is His.

Sometimes it feels like his newly-returned soul is rattling around inside his body, whittled down by archangels. He’s only a fragment of what he was.

How much of what is left, how much of the remainder of his soul, is Lucifer now?

He’s the only thing left of Lucifer on Earth. If he had any sense, he’d salt and burn himself before he does something horrible under while under his hallucination’s thrall.

Lucifer doesn’t like that plan. He’s talking to Sam, but his silver-tongued words are muddled. Sam backs away until his back is pressed up against the cold bars of the Cage. Ice scalds him, flays his skin. He’s coming apart at the seams, the feeble bits of his soul spinning out into the vacuum. There’s nothing left of him now.

 

* * *

  


Sam’s sitting on the floor.

The carpet is rough against his palms. His back is pressed up against a wall.

The hell?

His eyes feel gummy when he blinks and when he rubs at them they’re wet like he’s been crying.

“Sam?”

Sam looks up. Dean’s sitting on the floor too, just a few feet away.

“You back with me?”

Sam's not sure. Did he go somewhere? His brain feels fuzzy and when he tries to think there’s a vast empty space where memory should be. The windows are still dark, so it can’t have been that long. He doesn’t know why he’s on the floor. Hadn't he been on the bed?

He nods anyway, more to reassure Dean than anything else.

“Wanna tell me what the hell you took?” Dean’s angry, his voice flat. Sam doesn’t know what he did wrong this time. He took something?

“What?”

Dean’s face is supremely unimpressed.

Panic rises in Sam’s gut, bubbling up his throat and choking him. He doesn’t know what he did to make Dean so angry, doesn’t know how he got on the floor. Dean wants to know what he took. What did he take? Oh, God, Sam hopes it wasn't demon blood. It couldn't be. Was this even happening, or was it another hallucination? “I don’t, I don’t remember.” He grabs at the long-healed scar on his hand and presses down, digs the nail of his thumb in hard.

“Woah, woah, Sam.” Dean’s hands pry at Sam’s wrists, gentle despite his anger. Sam lets him. The scar doesn’t work anymore anyway. “What do you remember?”

Sam racks his brain. There’s a suspicious blankness he shies away from, recalling the stand-off with Dean months ago in an abandoned warehouse. He decides on honesty: “Going to bed.”

“Do you remember what you took?”

The answer suddenly slots into Sam's brain and there’s no point lying right now. “Midazolam.”

Whatever Dean expected, it was clearly not that. “The hell is that?”

“Anesthetic.”

“Anesthetic,” Dean repeats, anger giving way to confusion. “Were you planning on some low-key motel surgery?”

Sam’s brain is too fuzzy still to parse Dean’s humor, so he goes for honesty. “I just wanted to sleep.” It comes out embarrassingly weak and whiny. He’s still so tired.

Dean gets up then, leaves Sam sitting on the floor. Sam presses his hands to either side of his head, trying to will his mind into coherence. There’s a brief consideration of moving from the floor, but he discards the idea just as quickly. He doesn’t feel entirely present and even more than that he doesn’t want to piss Dean of any more than he already has.

“Drink that.”

There’s a paper cup hovering in the air in front of him. Sam grabs it clumsily, fingers reacting just a hair too slow. It’s just water inside. Sam doesn’t even notice how sore his throat is until the water hits it.

Dean’s back a little while later, helping to haul him up and over to sit on the bed. He’s got one of the uncomfortable metal chairs pulled over for himself and he sits close enough that their knees knock together. Dean checks Sam’s pupils with one of their flashlights. His face doesn’t tell Sam anything.

With a sigh, Dean scrubs a hand over his face. “I looked up that drug. That’s some nasty shit, Sam.”

Sam shrugs. He knew that.

“I thought you’ve been sleeping better.”

“In the car,” Sam says.

“Okay, so go sleep in the car! Back pain or whatever is better than OD-ing.”

Sam presses his mouth together mulishly. He doesn’t want to get into this, but Dean’s always been like a dog with a bone when it comes to Sam. “It doesn’t work if I’m alone.”

“So we’ll both go sleep in the car,” Dean says. Like it’s that easy.

 “I don’t think it’s the car,” Sam blurts out, before immediately thinking better of it.

“So, what? You need someone to sleep with you?” Dean cracks a weak grin. “You could at least buy me dinner first, Sammy.”

Sam tries to glare, but he’s too tired.

Dean stands. “Okay, c’mon.” He pushes and nudges at Sam until he’s lying back down on the bed, still fully clothed.

Sam lays on his back and listens to Dean move around the room. He’s not going to sleep. Lucifer’s been quiet, but Sam can feel him at the corners of his mind, lurking. He doesn’t blame Dean for wanting to catch some shut-eye himself, but Sam can stay awake another night. He’ll try something else tomorrow.

He’s not sure what that is, though. He’s running out of options and he can’t do this forever. When he tries to think of the days and months stretching out like an endless path in front of him it makes panic crawl up his throat. He can't, he won't make it. Something's gotta give.

Dean turns the lights off, but leaves the bathroom light on.

A moment later Sam is startled from his thoughts as the bed beneath him shudders. Dean flops down next to him.

“What the hell?” Sam asks.

“Move over, Gigantor,” Dean responds, pushing Sam’s shoulder with his own. Sam slides over to the edge. “You tell anyone about this and I’ll end you.” The words are grumpy, but the tone isn't. He actually seems a little pleased with himself.

“You don’t need to do this.” Sam isn’t even really sure what ‘this’ is. They’re both fully clothed, and lying on top of the comforters with a narrow space between them. It's a tight fit, two fully grown men on a rickety queen bed.

“Shut up,” is Dean’s response. Silence stretches out between them, but it’s obvious neither of them have fallen asleep. “You still don’t remember what happened when you were on those drugs?”

Sam shakes his head. Dean’s probably close enough to feel the vibration.

“You freaked out,” Dean admits, and Sam can tell it’s an understatement. He remembers how his eyes felt, itchy like he’d been crying. “You were seeing things. I know you’ve been seeing things a lot, but this was bad. I thought you’d cracked.”

It makes sense, now, the way Dean’s acting. He thought Sam had finally lost it. For good.

“I’m too big to be little spoon,” Sam announces, and grins when he surprises a bark of laughter out of Dean.

“Shut up.”

It doesn’t take long for Dean’s breathing to even out. It’s something Sam’s always been grudgingly impressed with, his brother’s ability to fall asleep instantly pretty much anywhere. The sound is familiar from ten thousand nights before, Sam’s whole life. Dean’s always been there. Stone number one.

When Sam was just a kid he thought that just Dean’s presence could scare away monsters. That was before he knew the monsters were real. Of course, he knows better now. But then again, Lucifer isn’t real either, right?

He shuts his eyes and focuses on the slow breaths next to him, the first lullaby Sam ever knew.

 

* * *

  


Sam wakes up.

At some point he rolled over onto his stomach. There’s a warm weight against his side and Dean’s snoring in his ear. A band of warmth across his back must be Dean’s arm.

It’s still winter outside, but the sun is shining.


End file.
